Seen: twice. Once in the early 70’s shown on Swedish TV shortly after we
moved here. Now: March 8, 2013

It’s hard to imagine the
world without reggae and it’s hard to really remember what a big impact this
film had on movie viewers – me included.I remember a wow feeling – loved the music, liked the guy.

I’m not quite the same
impressionable young newly awakened political creature I was in the 70’s but I
was again impressed and gripped by this movie.
Even as we say, “Oh, Ivan, don’t do that,” it’s so clear why he
does. A country hick arriving in
Kingston, robbed, turned away by his mother, cheated by a record mogul,
entangled in the marijuana trade run by a crooked cop, brainwashed by macho
violent super hero cowboy spaghetti westerns – of course he turns to violence
and becomes a kind of folk hero outlaw.
But it’s not that simple. While
Ivan becomes more and more locked into his tragic hero role, his marijuana
dealing friends, including the doting father (with probably the first and
certainly among the most magnificent Rastafarian hair mass the world has ever
seen) of a small sick boy, risk more and more to protect him from the law.

It’s painful to watch the
stark presentation of a poverty-stricken and corrupt Jamaica. I wonder how many
American tourists were in Jamaica the year this movie was made, enthusing about
how wonderful Jamaica is. But it’s also a gripping portrait of a whole variety
of people getting on with their lives the best they can with the help of music,
dancing and each other.

Jimmy Cliff is outstanding.
But the romanticized macho violence is very disturbing. Are movies like this
one part of the reason we still have angry young men shooting (and bombing
etc.) their way out of desperation? No, of course it’s not that simple. And not to have portrayed war as violent and
poverty as destructive would have falsified reality.